Wish you all A Merry Christmas,
May the Joys of the season
Fill your heart with goodwill and cheer.
May the chimes of Christmas glory
Add up more shine and spread
Smiles across the miles,
To-day & In the New Year.~Rosie Cash

It’s December again and Christmas is just around the corner. If you’re still confused about this year’s Christmas theme, here’s a list of Christmas ideas on settings and decoration to help you guide and prepare for a great holiday seasons. The most important thing to remember is to have fun doing and enjoy your preparation work. J Merry Christmas Everyone!

Christmas Celebration at Home

Neighborhood Christmas house deco – set up a small neighborhood committee who would like to participate and have a fun competition to decorate each houses and see who’s best. You can choose to lay down a few rules and evaluation points like the most attractive, the most organized, the most nature friendly or so on. The idea is really to get everyone start mingling and getting into the Christmas spirit together.

Decorating a home based on color themes – Choosing a color theme can go a long way. It helps you get the ball rolling with inspirational ideas based on the color you’ve chosen. Try Blue & White for a white Christmas feel, or the classic Gold & Red, or even something modern and chic like Green and Orange or Fluorescent Pink & Silver. Once you get started on the color, you’ll be surprised at how many things in the house that starts changing accordingly to the color theme 😉

Bake cookies/cakes – Home make the cookies & cakes by Yourself instead of buying and get everyone at home involved. It’s a great way to get the family connected including the boys. For ideas on Christmas cookies and cakes recipe, visit Joyofbaking.com/Christmas

Christmas caroling – caroling for Christmas never gets old. Here’s a quick step-by-step guide of ‘How to Organize a Christmas Caroling. Plan early to decide on timing of sessions (between Thanksgiving & Christmas), pick dates & songs list, identify your top carolers and make sure they’re there at all the session, plan your route, encourage and invite more people to participate along the way, dress up in your Santa, Elf, Santarina, or Victorian costume, and just enjoy yourself. Optional: bring eggnogs!

Give – Think of the poor and disable and how would they celebrate Christmas? This is a great month for giving and getting the blessings from doing so. Give away clothes, food and any other things not in use or simply give out money for charity.

Organize kids Christmas party – The children are usually most excited about Christmas and it’s a great idea to organize Christmas parties for them. Get come of the older kids to give some creative ideas on Christmas crafts, games, stuffing of stockings, snacks or food and get them to help in organizing this fun and excited event. Your kids will love you for this and don’t be surprised that you might have a great time too planning and joining this event.

Christmas Celebration in the Office

Cubicle decorating competition – everyone in the office has their cubicle and what better way there is to get into the mood and spirit of Christmas than decorating your own cubicles. The idea is really not to get the most expensive gifts for the winners but rather to get everyone involved in this event.

Homemade cookie baking and tasting competition – get staffs to participate in this competition to get a chance of having some Christmas treats in the office. You’ll be surprised that many staffs would want to join in this event as many of them will be preparing their own cookies at home and this would just be some additional fun. After judging, and price giving ceremony, everyone gets to enjoy the cookies! You might also decide to throw in a potluck along.

White Elephant Gift Exchange – If you work in a big office with many people, this game is great to get everyone involved. The rules are really simple. You determine a budget for all the participants to buy a gift anonymously bring all the gifts on that day and everyone sits in a circle. One by one then, you each person gets to either pick and un-wrap their gift from the gift bundle or steals it from the person before. This is also a great game for ice breaking among big group of people in the office!

Christmas theme best dressed day – announce a day nearing Christmas for everyone to come to office in their Christmas costumes. Not only you have an opportunity to dress down for a day, but some might even get creative doing this. Imagine Santa, Sexy Santarina, Rudolf or Mary in the Manger coming in to office.

Christmas tree decoration/ ornament making competition – it’s easy to have a Christmas tree in the office but imagine how much fun it can get to have the employees involved in decorating the tree. Organize something like each staff needs to make an ornament and hang in on the tree with the names and signature attached to it. It becomes more meaningful when each employee sees that they have put in effort decorating their office Christmas tree. J

The benefits of oats are endless and it’s ranked one of the healthiest foods in the world. To add on to this, oats is extremely easy & quick to cook and eat. If you’ve always had your oats in the same old recipe, you must read on further to see the various great & tasty ways to flavor and devour it. Now you can have your oats all 7 days in a week and start your journey towards the healthiest lifestyle you’ve ever had!

Benefits of Eating Oats

High in Vitamin B especially Inositol

Lowers cholesterols

Reduces high blood sugar

Selenium & Vitamin E content boost immune system

Natural antidepressant

Calms down the nerves

Relieves fatigue

Weight loss due to high fiber intake

Great protein source

Natural constipation remedy

10 Ways to Savour Oats

Oat Cereal – commonly found in your nearest supermarket, this is a great way to enjoy the benefits of oats in the form of cereal and cold low fat milk

Oatmeal Honey & Fresh Fruits– Mix some rolled oats with hot water & mix in fresh fruits like berries, mangoes, bananas or apricots. Pour over some over & enjoy.

Oats, nuts, dried coconut & fruits, & milk– This is a classic granola style recipe. Use nuts like almond, pecans & walnuts to enhance the taste and benefit out of the richness of the Omega 3 oils. Sprinkle some chocolate chips to sweeten it if desired. Serve with cold low fat milk.

Oatmeal Cream of Chicken Porridge – This is inspired by the Chinese rice porridge. Take your favorite instant soup such as cream of chicken or cream of mushroom, etc, mix it with some quick cook oats & mix it with hot water & enjoy!

Oats with cinnamon, nutmeg & brown sugar – this is great if you’re in the mood for some flavorful spices

Use dark chocolate instead of milk chocolate as healthier option. Dark chocolate is rich in antioxidants which are good for your heart. It also stimulates endorphin production, which increases pleasure & contains serotonin which acts as a natural anti-depressant.

Beat butter until slightly fluffy, and add the flour, sugar, baking powder, salt, vanilla & almond essence. Mix it with a spoon until you get a nice texture of coarse floury mixture. Don’t worry that it doesn’t look thin enough for a cake recipe. When you’re happy to have mixed the moderately dry ingredients, add the eggs & milk and proceed mixing with a beater until the blend is well. By now the batter will have a cake mixture look and you can add the chopped walnuts and chocolate chips. Mix well, pour into the baking pan.

Bake at 75 degree Celsius for 45 mins. Let it cool, and enjoy your cake with a nice cup of latte or hot tea!

*tips:

Get all your ingredients ready before starting the mixture as you want minimal time mixing and try and get it into the oven immediately after done as this will give a nice fluffy cake.

Almond essence gives a great fragrance to your cake especially when it has nuts. 3) Serve it with whipped cream/ crème cheese to enhance its taste. Happy baking!

About Braided Roses

BraidedRoses.com officially kick started in July 2011 and is fairly new, but has already captivated many loyal viewers. This website is an exclusive Lifestyle Portal which brings you news on health, fitness, relationship, wellbeing, and a variety of recipes. The vision is to facilitate knowledge lovers out there with high quality & prominent information through an easy doorway. Your feedbacks or critics are highly appreciated & welcomed at any time to enable continuous enhancement. Enjoy the site & God Bless!